Early press reports said a subcommittee of the panel had been tasked with preparing recommendations for revamping the tax code. However, the White House has recently dialed back expectations, saying that the product of the process will simply be a compendium of possible simplification and compliance-inducing measures offered without prioritization or recommendation.

Toiling on the tax subcommittee are Berkeley economics professor and former Clinton adviser Laura Tyson, educational pension fund TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson, former Securities and Exchange Commission chief William Donaldson, and Harvard professor and former Reagan/George H.W. Bush adviser Martin Feldstein, who has become something of a dissenter on the main board.

In a series of meetings broadcast on the web, the subpanel has heard several presentations from academics and other advocates of changes to the tax system.